“I always like mornings,” said Leliana. “It
makes you feel like the whole day is before you, you know what I mean? Like anything
could happen. You could eat the best meal of your life, you could learn a new
song, you could…” – here she dropped her voice to a seductively loud whisper -
“meet someone really special.”

“Today, the most special person we are
likely to meet will be a bandit leader, and the best meal of the day will be
this one,” replied Alistair.

They were in Farmer Merker’s kitchen.
Leliana looked bathed and scrubbed, and was wearing a white shirt with a
teasing neckline and black breeches. Sten, too, looked much better than he had
the previous night, after a cold bath from the farmer’s well. Alistair was feeling
under pressure to have a bath too, something he always rather hated to do.

The Farmer’s wife was at the other end of
the large room, fishing in the stores for potatoes to make a stew.

“Umm, Leliana…?” Alistair whispered.

She cast an inquisitive look at him.

“Why is that woman cooking for us? After
what happened last night, she should be poisoning our milk.”

It had certainly been quite the scene the
previous evening when Farmer Merker had entered with Neria hanging on his arm,
and commanded his wife to vacate the bedroom and send the children to the loft.
She had called Neria all sorts of names and threatened to harm herself, to
which Neria responded by casually casting a paralysis spell on her and saying
that if the woman did not leave quietly, she would make it permanent. There was
no such thing as a permanent paralysis spell that Alistair knew of, but of
course, the Farmer’s wife did not know that.

After that, to have her fawning over them
and making them breakfast was rather a surprising change.

“Oh that. I told her I managed to prevail
on Neria to follow the Maker’s path and while she slept next to her husband,
they did not actually engage in any…um, carnal activity. She’s feeling very
grateful,” replied Leliana.

“She bought it because it’s true,” came
Neria’s voice. She had entered behind Alistair while he had been talking. She
was positively glowing, exuding warmth. She again wore the scanty Chantry robe
from the previous evening, which momentarily distracted Alistair. He closed his
eyes and thought about peeling potatoes in the Redcliffe stables again and
gathered his thoughts.

“I’m…surprised,” he said at last.

Neria shrugged her shapely, bare
shoulders and sat down opposite Sten. The Qunari had not spoken a word since
morning and did not speak any now, though she wished him a good morning.

“Don’t be. Let’s just say his sword remained
in his own hands and leave it at that,” she held up her right hand and made a suggestive
motion.

“And then he was begging Neria to let him
go at it properly with him in the morning, which Neria refused – his wife heard
that bit and now thinks her husband is a monster, yes, but Neria has a heart of
gold after all,” smiled Leliana.

“Which is not entirely untrue,” said
Neria. “I’m adorable. Now let’s settle on a plan to deal with those bandits.
How many groups did you say there were?”

Leliana immediately grew business-like,
pulling out some parchment from her pocket and spreading it out on the table.

“I have the Chantry reward letters here.
They have the descriptions of the bandits and where they are usually to be
found. There are also some feral Bears that we should probably deal with and a
pack of wolves…”

“Do you think we can deal with all this
on our own?” asked Alistair, as Farmer Merker, hair dishevelled, belly
protruding entered, scratching his chest.

“What do you mean you decided to go on
ahead and deal with the Bandits without me? Am I some invalid that I should be
left behind? Why don’t you just send me back to my mother? Know this, though,
if she sent me with you, she had her reasons to do so, and my mother is a very
powerful witch!”

Neria listened patiently as Morrigan
ranted. She had anticipated some such response from her when she had taken
Leliana, Sten and Alistair and wiped out two bandit camps and a den of wolves.

“We asked the Healer if you could join
us, she suggested another day’s rest would do you good.”

Morrigan uttered an expletive. Alistair
wondered where she had picked it up, considering he had first heard it in
Denerim.

“Anyway, I see you’re all fine now,”
added Neria hastily. “Which is just in time for us to mount our assault on the
largest and most dangerous group of bandits.”

Having mollified Morrigan, Neria turned
her attention to Biscuit, who was pointedly ignoring her by looking intensely
interested in a piece of lint on
the floor.

“Morrigan needed company, you know, old
boy,” she ventured.

“Did not,” snapped the Witch.

“Grumph,” said Biscuit.

“Ok ok, she did not, but we thought she
did, and really, you wouldn’t have liked it much. These were very bony bandits.
Third-rate. Cut-price more that cut-throat. Dead in their boots.”

Biscuit made a slightly less sullen
growling noise.

In fact, it had actually been almost too
easy so far. The bandits had been scattered, in groups of threes, completely
unprepared for armed fighters and even less for a mage. They had followed a
simple three-step battle plan – Neria would show herself and launch an arcane
bolt at the most outlying bandit, Leliana would follow up with arrows as the
bandits rushed in towards them and Sten and Alistair would finish the job of
killing whatever managed to make it as far as their swords. The Wolves had been
marginally tougher to deal with, but a combination of fire spells and arrows
had mostly taken care of those as well.

“Now come on, we are going after their
ringleader. The Numero Uno Bandito, as the Antivans would say it.”

She led Morrigan and the mabari to the
outskirts of the Village. The others had made their temporary camp near Sten’s
cage.

“By the way, Morrigan, we came across
this Qunari, see…”

But Morrigan was seeing already. Her eyes
were virtually popping out of her head. Sten was cutting an even more imposing
figure in armour. Gleaming plate – he had polished it himself – and greaves on
his fingers, a greatsword in his hand, he looked every inch a warrior.

“I am Morrigan,” she said, walking up to
him with a confident stride. “I don’t know what they have told you about me,
but I am not to be messed with. Do you understand?”

The Qunari looked amused but only replied
with a nod.

“So I don’t care if they have told you
I’m a slutty woman or if you think that because I dress like this and you are
this big powerful warrior man I will just fall in your arms or expect you to
sweep me off my feet.”

Neria was tittering already, while
Leliana was showing obvious signs of struggle in keeping a straight face. Only
Alistair seemed genuinely puzzled.

“But Morrigan, we all know that Neria is
the slut of our group. I mean, no offense meant,” he added hastily, “But you
know, I mean she’s slept with something like five men since I’ve known here and
I haven’t know her that long…”

“Uh yes, we got the point,” Neria cut in.
“Anyway, now that you know each other, I think we should get a game-plan in
place. Leliana – how many of them are there?”

“At least six, according to reports.
Their Chief is supposed to be a very large man who wields a great-sword. They
also have more than one mabari hound at their disposal. We need to keep that in
mind.”

Neria scratched her chin.

“Biscuit, I need you to disable as many
human fighters as you can. Do not try to attack the dogs, do you understand?”

The dog had been circling Sten warily for
a while. Sten in turn had not taken his eyes off Biscuit. But when directly
addressed, he stopped mid-stride, yelped and continued. Neria took this for
acquiescence.

“Does the Dog actually understand what we
say?” whispered Leliana, under her breath, to Alistair.

“Morrigan, freezing spells on the dogs.
They are unlikely to be as well trained as the ones we have in the King’s Army,
so they will likely rush in a pack.
If you can keep them frozen in place - Sten, you know what you need to do.”

The Qunari gave the barest flicker of an
expression on his face that indicated he had heard her.

“It’s just that you do it so well,” she
winked. “Anyway, Leliana and I will provide covering fire for all of you.”

They were walking towards a knoll that
Leliana had told them was known as “Galleon’s Hill”, after a rich farmer called
Galleon who had been beaten to death by his mistress’ husband on it.

“Watch out for bears,” Leliana said, as
Biscuit seemed to cock his ears. They slackened their pace, letting the dog
take the lead. Leliana followed close behind, her ears almost visibly pricked
like Biscuit’s.

Biscuit’s growling softened as he
stopped. They were about thirty feet from a copse of trees.

“There’s probably something out there,”
whispered Alistair.

“Brilliant observation, Ser Obvious,”
said Morrigan.

“That’s me. Always to be counted upon for
pointing out what you know, like you being a complete bitch.”

Neria shushed them impatiently.

“What’s it, boy?” she asked. Biscuit made
a pointing gesture with this front paw. He had caught a scent, but they could
not see anything beyond the thick foliage.

Alistair looked on, puzzled. He liked the
mutt, or had grown to in the days they had been travelling together, and like
any Fereldan, had a great respect for the fighting capabilities of mabari
hounds, but he still found it difficult to believe that the dog actually
understood what Neria said and responded to it. Neria herself seemed to
implicitly believe it, though, and treated the hound as a fully-intelligent
member of the team. Which was much more respectfully than Morrigan could be
said to treat Alistair.

“Morrigan, you know what you have to do,”
he heard Neria say softly. Alistair had no idea what she was referring to – a
paralysis hex, perhaps? That was a spell – an interesting one, really – where a
mage could direct a spell at an area on the ground, causing anyone who stepped
in it to become instantly paralysed for nearly a minute (though death usually
came quicker).

Instead, he flinched as Morrigan nodded
and, with a hint of wispy magical light flowing about her left hand, shrank before his eyes into a black raven. He
saw Leliana gasp, and even Sten’s eyes grew wide. Before their eyes, the bird
flew off, flying over the trees and out of sight.

“I didn’t know she could do that,” said
Leliana. “It’s…she is not a Circle Mage, is she?”

“No,” said Neria. “She is not. She’s
Flemeth’s daughter.”

“THE Flemeth?” Leliana gulped.

“That’s what she said,” nodded Neria.

“No wonder she behaves like she does,
then. I mean, if my mother was a scary witch…”

Morrigan was indeed, flying back.
Alistair winced as she swooped down, nearly clipping his head. Seconds before
hitting the ground, the raven seemed to grow before his eyes into the
glossy-haired witch.

She brushed the hair off her forehead nonchalantly,
cast a glance at Sten, and then turned to Neria.

“Four black bears. One is quite the
monster,” she said. There was a trace of tiredness in her voice. Whatever spell
the transformation required, it had taken a lot of energy from Morrigan.

“Any chance of sneaking past?”

“You or I might,” Morrigan said. “Not
these others in their clanking armour.”

Morrigan and Neria were certainly dressed
in clothes that made very little sound as they moved. In a way, both their
robes were barely-there. Alistair found himself comparing the two mages – one a
Circle-trained product, the other schooled by an undoubtedly very powerful
apostate.

Morrigan wore a wolf-leather skirt, a
necklace with bear claws and a reddish-brown rag blouse across her breasts. The
rag was held in place by what looked like spider webbing and raven-feathers,
which meant that what was left of Morrigan’s modesty was at least kept intact
as she moved. There was also a hood that she sometimes wore over her head that
was of the same material as her blouse, but she wasn’t wearing it now. Her
sandals were plain ebony, and in her hands she wore light gloves with the
fingertips cut-off. Her staff was gnarled white-wood, probably cut from a
spruce in the Korcari wilds. Morrigan’s magic, as he had noted before, was
mostly from the school known as ‘entropy’, though he suspected she had not
learned it in quite the conventional way. She was also good with a variety of
other spells, but it was in paralysing, weakening, inducing dizziness in the
enemy that she excelled. For the most part, Morrigan was at her best hanging
behind a blade fighter such as himself, weakening his enemies until they could
be dealt with.

Neria wore the Chantry robe still, the ‘Holy
Sisters’ as she had taken to jokingly calling it, cut beyond recognition from the
demure garment it had been. She had made some more alterations to it, and the
strips that angled across her breasts now tied behind her back, instead of
going down to her waist. The two knots – one behind her neck and the other
behind her back – were actually firmer and held it in place better than the
earlier cut, as Neria had pointed out to Leliana when they had stopped at
mid-day for a bite. The skirt was still as it was, a bit lower at the waist now
than before. Neria wore no gloves, and her footwear consisted of plain wooden
sandals. She still had her standard Circle issue staff, some form of Elder
wood, Alistair guessed. Compared to Morrigan, Neria seemed to have fewer spells
up her sleeve. She had a very powerful arcane bolt, which was her default
attack in a battle, but her recourse was always to a fireball. Mind you, it was
a very powerful spell, Neria’s fireball – he had seen it burn darkspawn to a
crisp if they were close to the point of impact, and she easily knocked out
anyone standing within a five-foot radius, friend or foe, with it. She also had
a dangerous flaming spell, a concentrated funnel of fire directed at a single
opponent, which she seemed to have very precise control over.Apart from that, her cold and lightning
spells were good too, but she used them sparingly. She was not much of a
support fighter, was Neria, and seemed to have a limited range of spells, but
in offense, she was very dangerous.

“Step back, then,” her voice cut in on
his musing. “We will need to draw them out.”

“How do we mean to kill four big sodding
bears?” asked Alistair.

“Leliana, you any good with traps?” Neria
asked.

The Orlesian woman nodded, and under
Neria’s direction, they set about laying a line of traps. Neria had them
withdraw behind the line.

“The Bears will come charging at us from
that direction,” she said. When they do, we do not react until they are past
that line. Once they are, Leliana, I want you to aim for the eyes. Morrigan,
freezing spells won’t do much damage to something the size of a bear, so I want
you to concentrate on casting hastening spells on Alistair and Sten. Once they
are in range, we will have maybe to a count of three to destroy them. Alistair,
you stand at the left end, you will have one stab before the bear realises it
is being attacked. Sten, you will be on the right, and the same applies for
you.”

“And why won’t the bears realise they are
being attacked?” asked Alistair.

“Oh, you’ll see.”

With that cryptic statement, Neria began
to walk backwards. She led them twenty feet behind the line of traps. Biscuit
remained at her heels. Alistair and Sten took their positions.

Neria raised her staff and pointed it at the
brambles near the trees where the bears were supposed to be lying. Then with a
sweep, she sent forth a tendril of flame. The dry leaves caught fire quickly.
Within seconds, flames were dancing around the copse. Her eyes narrowed as she
kept her mind focussed on the flames.

Seconds passed. Alistair’s grip on his
sword hilt tensed. Then there was a shuffling sound, growing louder, louder,
and the bears burst forth, tearing towards them at a great pace. They weren’t
ordinary bears either, they were huge black brutes, with eyes dilated, racing,
slavering at the mouth. Blighted, he realised. Blighted by contact with the
darkspawn.

Alistair brought his shield up, his sword
held just behind. Sten held his great-sword pointing ahead.

The first bear stepped into the traps, it
howled as it bit into him, but dragged it along with its leg. The second one
stepped on an exploding trap and was thrown off the line, the third and fourth
were dragging too, slowed by the snapping of the traps. Leliana was firing
quickly, the shafts seeming to flow almost in a continuous line from her bow. Alistair
wondered why these battle moments always seemed to pass so slowly. Why he
noticed these little details. Leliana murmuring words to herself before each
arrow she fired. The narrowing of Sten’s eyes. Morrigan’s staff sending forth a
bolt of energy at him. He felt the muscles in his body loosen and re-bind, the
hastening spell giving him an ease of movement that would make his attacks
faster by half.

Neria leaned down and whispered to
Biscuit. The bears were ten feet away. Alistair smiled. This was it. The dog
leaped ahead, madly, suicidally, into the bear’s path, barking wildly. It
slowed the two in the middle. The bear on the left was within range now, its
sharp odour filling his nostrils, its spit almost on his skin, when his sword plunged
into its neck. The brute reared and tried to get at him, jaws snapping, but he
bashed it with his shield and pulled out his sword, trailing blood along the
blade.

The bear twitched as Leliana’s arrow
entered its stomach, and in that moment Alistair plunged his sword into its
neck again, killing it. He panted, as the blood gushed in a murky fountain onto
his legs.

He could see Sten had hacked his bear to
death, the head severed from its body.

Between him and Sten, were the bodies of the
other two bears, eyes lifeless, their bodies seemingly unharmed other than the
arrows sticking out of the flanks.

When he walked closer, he saw the
charring between their front paws, where the flame seemed to have burned in a
straight line from flesh to heart.

Neria might have only the one big trick
up her sleeve with her fire spells, but she was very, very good at it.

Alistair suddenly found himself feeling
rather sorry for the bandits they were expecting to fight soon.

#

“So you see, the Wagons will start
rolling out tonight itself. I understand the Templars in Lothering are
stretched, but the refugees have come to depend upon you, and if you show that
your men are willing to accompany the wagons, the people will agree to go.”

Alistair had spent the better part of the
previous night and this morning convincing the Chantry and the Templars to
encourage the refugees to leave Lothering. With the elimination of the bandits,
there was now no reason to stay back in the village, but it was a concept they
seemed to have trouble grasping.

Neria was frustrated at the defeatism
engulfing the village. It did not matter how earnestly she and Alistair and
Leliana told them the roads were safe and they needed to get a move on, the
refugees kept finding some reason to say they would go later.

“Why won’t they understand, there IS no
later,” she had said to Leliana as they had dinner at Farmer Merker’s the
previous evening.

“They have come to think their journey is
over. That the Templars will look after them. That they won’t have to move again,”
Leliana replied in her musical voice.

“We can’t stay here until they make up
their minds,” she said at last. “We have work to do. Tomorrow we go to the
Chantry and make a last-ditch plea to the Revered Mother and the Templars –
Morrigan, you and Sten gather our things and meet us at the Windmill.”

“Suits me just fine,” said Morrigan,
casting a look at Sten that could best be described as a cross between flirty
and demanding.

At this point, Farmer Merker had returned
from the fields and audibly caught his breath on seeing Neria.

She rose from the wooden bench and turned
to face him. Behind her, she knew the Farmer’s wife had her eyes fixed on them.

“Gus, dearest!” she said, dropping her
voice to the breathless whisper that set even Alistair’s pulse racing, despite
him knowing perfectly well that it was an act. “I have been looking forward to
seeing you SO much! All day today as I fought the bandits and wolves and bears
all I could think about was you and how we hardly got to…you know…”

Farmer Gustaph Merker gave a smile that
disappeared when his eyes fell on his wife’s face. Agnethe Merker was a plump
woman about five years younger than her husband. She had borne a child fifteen
years ago and seen him join the Bann’s levies and then go to Denerim to join
the Bann’s household over there. A devout Andrastian, she shared her husband’s
mistrust of Elves and magic. When her husband had brought home a spectacularly
beautiful Elf girl home, she had been shocked and angry. When she realised the
said Elf was a mage, she was distraught and it took all Leliana’s persuasion to
keep her from poisoning herself. In the morning, when Neria and Leliana had
convinced her that Neria had found a conscience and refrained from corrupting
her husband by tempting him with her flesh, she had found her faith in the Maker
restored.

But now the dark temptress was clearly at
it again. Agnethe put her hands on her hip and glowered at her husband.

“Uh…I…,” Farmer Merker was fighting a
battle again. A foot from him, Neria’s deep blue eyes were inviting, her lean,
toned stomach and smooth bare shoulders even more so, creating a spike between
his legs. Ten feet behind her, his wife’s increasingly swelling face was
serving the exact opposite function.

Neria turned around, looked at the
Farmer’s wife, and smiled.

“Agnethe,” she said, and before Gustaph’s
widening eyes, strolled over to her and placed her hands around his wife’s
neck. “I think your husband would really really
like it if you could be in his bed tonight. I know I would. When did he last
make love to you like you deserve?”

Alistair shook his head with a groan.
Morrigan seemed amused, Leliana even more so.

“Come now. Alistair and I will clean up
the kitchen. You, Agnethe, are going to enjoy your last night in Lothering with
your husband. Tomorrow the both of you get on a caravan bound for Denerim. Gus,
take her upstairs.”

It had been amusing, the look on his
face, and if she had to be honest, Neria was rather pleased at how she had
handled it. She had been quite ready to ‘handle it’, of course, but this way
she could focus on working out the strategy for tomorrow.

#

They had succeeded to some extent,
getting the Merker couple onto a wagon with most of their tenants. But the rest
of it had not been easy. Merchants were asking exorbitant fees to ferry
refugees in their wagons. Finally, Sten and Leliana had taken on the task of
intimidating and cajoling them into doing it for as small a fee as possible.
The second caravan after Merker’s was to leave on the morrow, with three more
to go during the day.

The Chantry was their final stop. The
Templars were a decent lot, their Captain, Ser Bryant a serious man in his
thirties who clearly had a lot of respect for the Grey Wardens and even allowed
them to look through the Chantry stores for excess supplies.

She was looking over some old storybooks
to see if there was any useful information on the darkspawn when she heard
Alistair say a rather surprised Halloo. She walked over to where he was, and
saw him talking to a Knight with red hair. Not a Templar though.

“Neria, this is Ser Donell, from
Redcliffe,” Alistair introduced him. “As I said, Ser Donell, I am a member of
the Grey Wardens now, and Neria is my…commanding officer.”

It struck Neria that his calling her the
commanding officer when they were the last remaining Wardens in all of Ferelden
was something of a hollow compliment.

“I remember Ser Perth. Didn’t he thrash
me once for putting mud in his small clothes?” said Alistair.

“That was me, actually” said Ser Donell.

Neria sized up the Knight. He was about
forty, very fit and not bad looking at all. Suddenly it struck Neria that she
was deeply, ravenously in need of a man. That for all the distaste she had
shown for Gustaph Merker, she would gladly have taken him at that moment had he
been there. That she had gone without a man for longer than she ever had since
she had turned fifteen.

Alistair and the Knight were discussing
Redcliffe, where the Knight was talking of Arl Eamon having fallen sick and the
Arlessa sending Knights out on some wild-goose chase for Andraste’s Ashes,
which legends said could cure any ailment. Ser Donell himself had been reading
up a lot about all kinds of legends related to Andraste, but had found nothing useful
about the location of Andraste’s Ashes thus far. She heard little of it, and
walked a few steps behind as the Knight and Alistair walked out of the Chantry.
They met Biscuit just outside, and Morrigan, Leliana and Sten near the Tavern.
Ser Donell spoke about how he was planning to leave Denerim as well, but was
waiting for another Knight, Ser Henrick, a Templar who was to have met him in
Lothering.

“Ser Henrick?” asked Neria, now dreaming
of having two men to break her sexual
fast with.

“He was to have arrived in Lothering two
days ago,” said Ser Donell. “But I have heard nothing of him. It is not like
him to be late.”

“This remind you of him?” Morrigan was
holding up the locket she had taken off the body when they had finished with
the highwaymen outside Lothering.

“That…that’s Henrick’s locket,” the
Knight took it from her.

“Found it on a dead body on the Highway
outside Lothering,” said Morrigan. “Killed by highwaymen. We took care of
them.”

“This…this is terrible. Poor Henrick.
Those Highwaymen have much to answer for!”

“They died painfully,” Neria assured him.

“I suppose I have no reason to tarry in
Lothering then,” sighed Ser Donell. “I will make for Denerim. Go with one of
the caravans you mentioned, most probably tomorrow. Will you be with us?”

“We can’t wait for the caravans,” said Alistair.
“And we probably won’t be heading for Denerim either.”

“That’s too bad, then,” Ser Donell said
courteously. “Perhaps for the better as far as I am concerned. You Wardens are
going to be hunted now that Loghain has a bounty out on you.”

“He does?” Alistair sounded surprised.

“Probably the first thing he did,” said
Neria. “A large one?”

“Rather large. Treason, you know. He
accuses the Wardens of killing the King.”

“Yes, we heard something of that,”
Alistair said grimly.

“I have a room at the Tavern,” said Ser
Donell. “You would perhaps join me for a mug of ale together before you depart.
I have some money and armour I was to have given to Ser Hendrick. I suppose he
has no use for it now. Perhaps you can make better use.”

“I don’t think we have the time for
that,” said Alistair. “But I’ll come and take the armour. We can always use
some.”

“I’ll go,” said Neria hastily. “I’ll
catch up with you at the Windmill. I wanted to get some treats for Biscuit at
the Tavern anyway.”

She was reasonably sure that Alistair, at
least, had a pretty good idea that it was just an excuse, but she consciously
did not look behind as she followed Ser Donell the short distance to the
Tavern.

Ser Donell’s room was a small and neat
one. He had been telling her some story about Alistair as a child, falling into
the Lake, and when they got there, he fished out a bag of coins from his trunk
as well as some gleaming Templar armour folded in parts. She took the plates
and the coins and laid them on the floor. Then she placed her staff in the
corner and closed the door.

“My Lady?” the Knight looked at her,
realisation slowly dawning on his face.

“Get out of that armour,” she said, her
breathless whisper this time not an act.

He reached for her, and she let him hold
her and kiss her, and fondle her behind. The cold steel of his armour made her
body tingle. She pulled the rivets, and he helped her, and then she was looking
at his shirt, and then that was gone too, and his muscled body was before her,
and she kissed his chest, his stomach, she made him whimper as she kissed his neck
and put her hand down his breeches. It was stiff and hard in her hand, even
harder in her mouth as she went to work on it as she knew only she could. He
was beautiful and long, and she was enjoying herself as she allowed him to fill
her mouth, taking it so far in she could feel his eyes pop with wonder and
pleasure. Then she opened her eyes and took it out and got back on her feet. He
was fumbling with the knot behind her neck, she pushed down her skirt. He
kissed her again, the strips of cloth came undone, and fondled her small but so
perfectly-cupped breast and gently pushed her onto the bed.

She came almost within seconds of his
entering her, an orgasm made of urgency as much as desire, and then once again
minutes later, this time more satisfying, allowing herself to feel the pleasure
fully. Then she opened her eyes and looked into his and maybe it was her eyes that
sent him over the edge as he pulled out and came on her stomach. She let her
head fall back and held his arm as she felt a final wave of pleasure hit her,
and he leaned in again and kissed her.

“Now I really hope we meet again,” she
said, finally getting off the cot, wiping the sweat from her brow. It was
ironic. She never really felt too cold in the winters, but this exertion
brought sweat to her body, making it shine and glisten. She fastened the knots
again, covering her breasts and then wore the skirt.

“Thank you, my lady,” Ser Donell gasped,
struggling to rise.

“Thank YOU,” she replied.

“I…you should wipe,” he said, pointing to
her stomach, “I should…here, use the cloth…”

“I’m fine,” she laughed, picking up the
money and the plate with one hand and taking the staff in the other. “A man’s
seed, I’m always proud to show off.”

And then he grabbed her again and the
armour clattered to the floor and the bed creaked so much that the barkeep
downstairs, who had not seen Neria enter, sent a boy up to check whether the
Knight was suffering a fit.

#

She skipped along with fields closest to
the village towards the Windmill. The money hung on a belt at her waist and she
had packed the armour into a sack that she carried over her shoulder. It was
not until she had actually reached the foot of the hill on top of which the
Windmill was constructed that she suspected anything was wrong. But there was
no sign of any of her companions. She looked around, took her staff into her
right hand and dropped the sack with the armour and walked slowly around the
hill.

She was near the north end when she heard
the voices.

“Please, be reasonable! You know me! I am
Sister Leliana.”

“Yes we know you, Sister, and we know
that you march with these Wardens now,” she heard a man’s voice.

“The bounty on their heads would feed our
families for a year,” she heard another.

Neria began to run towards the voices.

“If you don’t walk away, Sister, you die
with them.”

“Get out of the way, Leliana. Sten,
Morrigan, you too. There is no need for you to die for me,” Alistair, heroic as
always.

“Sten of the Beresaad does not step away
when the mob tries to kill his comrades,” she heard the Qunari’s voice, deep
and measured as always.

“I’m in this as much as you are,
Alistair. I’m not going back to Mother leaving you to die.”

Neria saw them now. Thirty or forty
villagers, armed with rakes, shovels and pitchforks. They stood in a bunch,
facing the four companions.

“I stand with the Wardens, Alistair. If
the Maker wills that our mission ends here, then I will gladly die here at your
side,” said Leliana firmly.

Alistair drew his sword.

Leliana nocked an arrow to her bow.

“You won’t reconsider?” she said. “Many
of you will die.”

“It’s the Elf Whore!” someone had spotted
her.

Alistair had, until that moment,
entertained thoughts of injuring one or two and making a run for it. Now he was
rather more inclined to cut off a few heads first.

“Yes, it’s me.”

There was a coldness in her voice he had
only heard once or twice before. It had scared him then. It chilled him to the
bone now.

“Step back, Alistair, Leli, Sten…you too,
Morrigan. Biscuit, to me.”

“Neria, you can’t – your fireballs can’t
handle this many men,” protested Alistair. He did not think they had any chance
really. Morrigan and Leliana were most effective from a distance. Large numbers
would surround and kill them before they could do much damage. He, Sten and
Biscuit would take out a number of them, no doubt. Their training, weapons and
armour would tell, but ultimately the numbers would be too much.

“Alistair, I said step back. Behind me.”

It was a command. They all followed it.

“You want to kill or capture Alistair and
me?” she asked.

One of the peasants spoke.

“You’re Wardens and there’s a bounty on
yer head. You lot are traitors to the crown and killers of the King.”

“We killed the bandits hemming you inside
the city. We arranged for caravans to get you to safety. We gave healing
potions to your hospital. Damn it, we even intimidated half the merchants in
the village into keeping their prices low so that you would not suffer. And you
want to kill us?”

“This one talks too much. Let’s stuff our
cocks in her mouth when this is done. Kill the rest. Come on boys, time to get
us that bounty!”

Alistair watched as they rushed at her,
all thirty-seven of them, makeshift weapons raised. He expected her to duck, to
command Biscuit to attack, the make a run for it. Fireballs would take out
maybe five or six of the attackers before she was swamped. The numbers just did
not add up, the five of them – and the dog – were no match for nearly forty
peasants, however lightly armoured they might be.

The distance between her and the men on
the attack was hardly five feet now and she had not budged. What was wrong with
her?

And then he saw it, a shift in the air
itself, a red cloud above them, blocking the sun, darkness at noon, and
streaks, no, streams of fire raining
down, the smell of burned flesh, men screaming as a wind rolled under the
cloud, a little tornado in the fields, a tornado of fire, an Inferno.

The first of the attackers, the one who
had spoken, stopped within a foot of Neria, his shovel raised in his hand, and
turned around. Every one who had stood with him was dying or dead, screaming in
agonies that only the burning of the flesh can engender.

“You did that,” said Neria calmly. “Their
deaths are on your head. Their
painful, tortured deaths.”

He blubbered; he fell to his knees,
dropping the shovel.

“We all – we all planned it, it was, it
was ALL our decision,” he sobbed.

“But you’re the one who’s going to live
with it.”

The inferno had died down. Alistair
flinched as he heard the groans and saw the twitching bodies on the charred
grass.

Neria turned and walked calmly towards
them. Biscuit, at her heels, was quiet.

“Will I regret this, Alistair?” she asked
softly.

They began to walk. They could make out
the steps to the Imperial Highway in the distance.

“There was no other way, Neria.”

“I know. I’ll try to remember that.”

She walked slowly now. Sten with his long
legs was several feet ahead. Leliana was subdued, but kept her distance as
well, humming a sad song under her breath. Morrigan was trying to keep up with
Sten.

“Alistair.”

He stopped. She had fallen behind.
Biscuit walked on, past him towards Leliana.

“Yes?”

“I fucked Ser Donell.”

“I know,” he replied.

“I think I used him. I regret that. He is
a family man, isn’t he?”

“He has a wife in Redcliffe. Two
daughters, a little younger than you.”

“I…how bad am I?”

Alistair sighed. When he was in his full plate
armour, she looked like a child next to him. He put a hand on her shoulder. She
rested her cheek on his breastplate and cried. He patted the back of her head.

“You have more power than anyone else in
Thedas, Neria,” he said. “Magical, yes, and sexual too. The Circle has taught
you to control your magical power well. What you unleashed here, it was frightening,
yes, but…I know battle, Neria. Without that spell, we would have died in these
fields. And we Wardens do what we need to in order to stop the Blight, and if
we are the last Wardens in Ferelden, then our survival is more important than
anything else in the world right now.

“As for Ser Donell, while I am sure he
wanted it as much as you did -when you
want a man, there is no power in the Maker’s world that will deny you. That is
the power you should use carefully. If your desires get in the way of our duty
as Wardens it is that which you will need to curb.”

She nodded, and stepped back, tear stains
running down her cheeks, smudging the dust on them.

“You will tell me if I am doing wrong, if
I am going too far, won’t you, Alistair?” she said.

“I will, Neria,” he said, and leaned in
and kissed her on the forehead.

She smiled, an innocent smile, a smile
that spoke of trust and friendship, and for a moment Alistair thought he could
learn to love her. Then his eye fell on her stomach, where an unmistakable
stain that was not of tears, of something much more carnal, that she had shamelessly
not wiped, was still visible and he knew that there could never be love between
them.

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About Me

Percy Slacker was bitten by Schrodinger’s Cat as a child, and has since then combined a deep fear of cats with an
abiding conviction that he both exists and does not exist at the same
time. This existential doubt has led him
to grow up to be a writer while not actually being a writer.

He lives in Mumbai with his family, his book collection and a firm
conviction that modern civilization is in an interminable decline.